


Falls the Rain Again

by fresne



Category: Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, The Highwaymen (Song)
Genre: Cat1, Multi, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Reincarnation, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was a highwayman, on the coach road I did ride.<br/>I was a sailor, born upon the tide.<br/>I was a dam builder across the river deep and wide.<br/>I fly a starship across the universe divide.</p><p>Reaching the other side to become a single drop of rain.<br/>I'll be back again, and again, and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Single Drop of Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> The following may be considered as inspiration for my work and inspiration for my dialogue, possibly even quotes because apt quotes are cool:  
> For the sake of Clarity, as there are more than one Highwayman song out there, this is the [Campbell song](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwayman_%28song%29) as sung by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylan Jennings and Kris Kristopherson.

Falls the Rain

&&&

It is a slowly condensed birth. Rain born of the warm wet winds from southern seas in sudden cloud clung meetings with the old peaks that prickle down the centre of the green island. High above those fulminating thunder heads, the schooner moon casts silver roads upon the atlas of the clouds. Having been born, a drop of rain falls with its siblings. A warm summer rain.

Such a long way, the drop falls. The drop is small. Any height would be a long way. The drop dances with the others. They move with the laughter of being born. A gentle breeze lifts the drop up for a quick updraft and sideways. Then down again.

This single drop of rain splashes against a supple young leaf. The leaf sways at the sudden wet kiss. They shiver together. The drop slides ever so slowly down the sweet green spine of the leaf. The drop glides a caress before reaching the leaf's long curled tip. They cling together, reluctant to part, but gravity pulls the drop away

The drop splashes into the stream below.

The stream spirals a brief ring and flows on.


	2. The Highwayman

&&&

The Autumn of '24 found Sixteen Strings Kit - so named for the sixteen colorful strings he tied round the knees of his tight breeches of fine silk - lurking about by the old Roman bridge on the coach road twixt London and Bath. Now he weren't in charge of this little venture. But a man needed to make his way, so he was along for the ride. Sure paid better than light fingers on dangling purses. 

Kit waited in a thick copse of woods along a dip in the old white Roman road that looped through the green. A slab of ancient stone lay wedged across a gossiping stream. He couldn't help but think of the men who'd laid down the rocks for this road and bridge so long ago. There was a lot of water flowed under this here bridge. Wasn't much to do but think while waiting for the London bound coach to make its way.

Black Heart Tully was crouched on the other side of the road. Just before the bridge, they'd laid out a tree on the road all natural like. 

He heard the coach before he saw it rattling down the old road.

The coach came down over the hill and slowed as well they might.

The coachman sawed at the reins, "Buggering fuck."

The outrider shifted in his seat next to the coachmen. 

Black Heart Tully stepped from behind his oak. "Hand over what you got."

Kit liked to be more gentleman like about his work. He cocked his pistol. "Good evening, good sirs. No need for concern. A few baubles lost, and we'll part as friends." He tilted back his french cocked hat with its brace of silk roses and grinned. No one got out of the coach. Black Heart Tully raised one of his pistols and the mad bastard fired into the coach. Kit had no choice, but raise his pistol higher. "Well, mostly friends." 

The outrider cursed a blue stream and the coachmen struggled to control his horses.

A motley enough group of travellers spilled out of the coach. Now along with a couple of lawyer types, a bishop looking fellow, and his prune faced wife, but Old Moll spilled her way out with a sweet young miss with curling black hair under a starched linen cap clutched firmly in Moll's grip. Surely the lot of them were Moll's marks for the journey.

The bishop fellow said, "Now, see here! I'm a man of God!"

Black Heart Tully got with the gap tooth sneering. "Then you're used to charity."

The pretty young miss buried her face against Moll's shoulder in a fetching sort of way. The young miss glanced back at Kit and licked her lips, "I'm going to be ravished." If the relish in her tone and the way Prune face's expression shrivelled up like a winter apple was any indication, the young miss was no stranger to a hard ride in a hay rick or two.

Kit puffed up his chest to better show the fine lace at his throat and the cut of his calves in his silk stockings.

Old Moll gave Kit a look that said he'd best not cross her, as if he'd be foolish as that. They were friends after all. Old Moll said, "Don't you worry, Mistress Jenny. You'll be safe with Widow Flanders watching over you."

Kit held out the burlap sack on the blunt of his sword. "No, worries, love. I'd never trifle with such a lovely flower. We'll just part you with a few baubles and be on our way." He just hoped they'd part with the baubles before Black Heart Tully shot more than the coach. He'd begun to think that perhaps this partnering weren't in the best interests of his health or reputation.

The lawyer types had plump purses, silk handkerchiefs, and fine gold watches. The Bishop and Prune face coughed up, after some additional persuasion, a fat purse and some pretty enough gold chains. When the pretty young miss plucked off her crucifix, Kit twinkled a wink at her. She cast her face down, but eyed him while clutching her corseted chest in such a way as to set his own family jewels to swelling.

Which was all well enough.

That was when the job went fucked six ways from Sunday. When all that could be collected had been round up, Black Heart Tully said, "Mistress Flanders, I'll want your share too."

She gave him a knife blade look. "Sir, I'm just a poor widow. I've not two farthings to rub together."

Black Heart Tully turned his pistol on her. "Now, Moll, we all know you sew your take in your skirts. So set to ripping." All vinegar in her expression, Moll pulled a small knife from between her breasts and spilled her gold and it was a prize alright. She dropped more than a few farthings and a dozen silk handkerchiefs and gold watches in the bag, and smiled a cutting promise.

Black Heart Tully was actually laughing as they rode off, as if he hadn't heard about what happened to Reedy Tom when Old Moll was done with him. Kit was so busy not telling Black Heart Tully what to do, they took the same route they had last time back to camp. Right into the soldiers own trap.

There was no way past it but through. Kit pulled his sword and got with the slashing about. He barely saw the white faced boys he cut through. He could hear feel the thunk of flesh on his blade as he spent their life's blood.

In all that, he couldn't be sure just what happened to Black Heart Tully. He waited outside their camp for an hour or so. Then because what had happened earlier didn't sit right with him, he rode until he came to Gotsville and the first coach house with a light in the upper window.

He let his weary horse into the stable and went into the taproom.

There Old Moll was, sitting by the fire, calmly sewing the rents in her skirts. As she saw him, she said, "Ah, there. I knew you were a gentleman." He discreetly handed her the sack and waited while she counted it. She pursed her lips when she saw that he'd added a coin or so from the Bishop's purse. She smiled. "Now, if you were thinking of being a real gentleman, and were wanting to return Mistress Jenny's crucifix, which she got from her dear departed pa, her room's the first on the stairs."

After the night he'd had, Kit felt in the mood to celebrate being alive. He kissed Old Moll's hand. Old Moll didn't blush. She did examine the cut of his long leather coat, oiled to keep off the rain. "Always did love a well-dressed man."

Kit winked at her and climbed the stairs. The first door opened easily enough. Mistress Jenny was in her bed wearing nothing, but her shift and stays. Her hand flew to her sweetly bound chest. "Sixteen Strings. What are you doing here?"

He dangled her gold crucifix like a goodly lure. "My conscience wouldn't let me keep it."

"Oh!" She slipped out of her bed. She held up her hair, so he could put it on her. He dropped Christ between her breasts and stole a kiss on her soft neck. "Oh, sir. I," she turned her head and opened her mouth to his kiss. Neither of them pretended that she was making any sort of protest. Her lips parted for him sweet as a flower. He popped the buttons on her corset's busk until her breasts were free. He whispered against her lips, "I've unleashed the horses. Fancy a ride?"

Her soft sweet hand crept down and cupped him in his silk breeches in answer. That nimble hand had his laces undone in a trick. It was only as he had her skinned of her shift that he had the thought, "What about Old Moll?"

She pushed him back on the bed and climbed astride him. "Don't worry about her. She spends most nights just dozing a little in the taproom." From where he was, he had no thought but to kiss each of her breasts in turn, and Christ for good measure seeing as the Good Lord was hanging there.

Kit wasn't ashamed to say it, but Mistress Jenny taught him a thing or two or fifty.

Afterwards, they went downstairs and split an ale or three with Old Moll, who could be quite merry when the mood was on her. She and Jenny traded back and forth a laughing tale about a merchantman in Brighton, who'd hoped for a ride and received one in turn. 

It wasn't until Kit was some fifty miles down the road that he realized that Jenny'd lifted his purse from his breeches. Weren't much to do, but laugh. Mistress Jenny had given him more than good value in exchange.

He set off down the coach road looking for his next prize.

&&&


	3. Rain on Tyburn

&&&  
The rain is falling on Tyburn hill. The young man in his specially tailored pea-green suit does a jig for the crowd on the platform. He bows his last bow. Cursing the hangman for a bastard, he is fitted with a cravat of something not as fine as lace. 

He dances another jig then. The rain continues. It falls on the crowd. It falls on the gallows.

A single drop slides down the tip of the man's boot and falls into the mud below.

A young woman picks pockets while the crowd watches him swing on the line. What she wipes off her cheek is not a tear. It's simply that its raining.

&&&


	4. The Sailor

&&&

There was more money in the China Sea route, but Chris'd been born upon the tide where the sea of Cortez met the Pacific.

His Mama had come cross the country the long way round. She'd been determined to make it to where her man was working the hide trade in California.

She hadn't told a soul that she was baking him, or they might not have let her board ship. As it was, they'd almost gone down round Cape Horn. While he was growing up, she'd told him about the sailors running up and down the rigging to get the ice hardened sails loose or tied up given the storm of the day. If something went wrong, she'd always tell him, "Well, Christopher, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye trying to get the ice off a sail in a blow."

If he'd been fretful, she'd described curls of blue and green ice floating by the ship like fantastic castles built by mermaids to lounge on with their pet seals.

She said, "Christopher, the day you was born, a humpback whale and her calf was blowing off starboard. Why I breathed in so hard over such a pretty sight that when I breathed out, you popped out. Let me tell you, after that the jig was up. Weren't no one on that ship that didn't know there was a baby."

Chris wore his first toy, a carved piece of seal bone on a leather thong around his neck.

When got to Mission San Diego de Alcala, turned out his Papa had a whole 'nother wife. Weren't nothing for it, but they moved to Pueblo de Los Angeles where his Mama swore if she never set foot on another boat, it was too soon.

But she could see he pined for the sea. She'd made friends with Toule, a Kanakan sailor and asked him to teach Chris what he could. Truth be told, Mama and Toule were a bit more than friends, but Chris was the only one of Mama's children who'd been born on the tide.

It should have been hard living before the mast. Skylarking on the rigging high above deck when gentle gusts set the lines to dancing about. There was no bigger sky. There was no larger estate. But where on land, below deck fumbles in the forecastle were a crime, the sea had its own law.

By the time young Billy came board, Chris had been ten years before the mast. Chris took him skylarking on the mainsail. As they'd tied the lines with clear blue sky around them until forever, Chris'd said, "I'll never be an officer, but I've never sailed a whaling ship and I'll never sail any coast but this one."

With one of those brilliant smiles that could sell pearls to a South Islander, Billy said, "It is beautiful," and the way his English put the accent on everything, Chris thought for once that the coast weren't the only thing that was beautiful.

After that, he'd think about the way Billy's hair was a sort of raven black all whipped around by the breeze in curls round his head. His chest a deep wide bunk with wild black hair all over it. When young Billy breathed in, it felt like all the air in the world went in there. In a squall with his varnished black tarpaulin pulled over his head, young Billy looked like Davy Jones himself come to walk the decks.

Chris didn't say nothing. Billy weren't interested in forecastle fun. Chris offered in an offhand sort of way to show that there weren't nothing serious in it, and Billy said in that friendly way of his with a wide white smile in his sun browned face said, "Nah. For me, it's the port ladies or the right hand."

Chris nodded and smiled and ached. 

Now, all told, when he was in the San Francisco Bay, Chris preferred it when they docked in Oakland. He could step off his ship. Walk twenty steps to Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, where he'd find his money pinned to the ceiling and drink until that was gone without worrying that there was a secret trap door and he'd find himself on his way to China. As it was, the stews of the Barbary Coast had few temptations for him.

But this was young Billy's first time in San Francisco and with his ears full for months with tales of the Barbary Coast, nothing for it, but that he wanted to drink and whore his way through San Francisco.

As Chris stepped ashore, he felt like he always felt. The world was unsteady and he was unsteady in it. But his best mate was headed up Pacific Avenue, which couldn't have been farther from the clean clear gust of the sea. Chris stepped over two woman slouched in the gutter singing something about a drowned girl and sunshine. He smiled as young Billy turned to look back. He nodded. They stopped at "The Golden Mile". Young Billy drank deep. Chris was careful to sip his drink. He didn't want any laudanum in his whiskey. He kept the back of his head to the wall. He didn't want a hard knock either.

Later, he cursed himself. He shoulda, oughta, coulda followed young Billy when he went to take a piss. Except, he kindof couldn't. Instead he let things get screwed six ways from Sunday. He waited at their table. He smiled off the night time ladies that came to take up camp there. He waited. He ordered another drink to sip. He went to check, and there weren't no Billy.

He asked everyone. No one was sharp eyed enough to see him. Billy with his deep chest and his eyes that could spot the Catalinas when there weren't nothing but a pimple on the ocean. It was like the world shrugged and young Billy was gone.

Chris went back to look, but found more nothing. Come end of leave, for the first time, Chris stepped back on his ship without feeling like he was being plucked free of earth.

He couldn't even feel like he was leaving something behind. He climbed the rigging, but even skylarking weren't the same. He scanned the horizon for Catalina island and with a heavy heart sailed down the coast towards the Horn of Mexico.

&&&


	5. Rain on the Horn of Mexico

&&&

The summer monsoon cracks where the sea meets the desert sky with a flash of lightning. Great fingers rake the sky with so much fire as to sear the eye. The clouds squeeze between the rattle of thunder and give way. Rain falls not in drops, but in sheets. It falls on the ocean. It falls on the desert. It falls upon the ship struggling on the waves.

A single drop is born and lost in that fury. It falls into the sea and the depths swallow it.

&&&


	6. The Dam Builder

&&&

Toffer didn't need the morning siren to wake him. He had the birdsong for that. Thrice cursed creatures woke him up hours before dawn. Just when he was ready to climb a tree and wring the damned things' chirping necks, he breathed in the wild scent of desert pine and remembered where he was.

He had a full belly. He had a job. He had a place to stay. He wasn't living in the mud flats in Ragtown. He wasn't hoping and praying and crying for a job anymore in McKeeversville. He was living in one of the bunkhouses in River Camp. Sure it was hot enough to dry a man into a husk that could just float away, but it was work.

Toffer was a "high scaler". The work he did was important. It wasn't what he'd imagined in school, but he'd had his picture in the paper as the Human Pendulum swinging Tommy or Mack out over the canyon. He'd swung dynamite too a time or so. It made him feel alive. Scaling the cliffs and chipping away the weathered stone looking for the virgin rock that could bear the weight of all the water that was going to be there. He pushed out over concrete and river and nothing and felt the vertigo of being too high for anything to get him down.

That morning, Toffer made himself get out of his warm bunk and head to the mess hall. Flanders was already cooking up a mound of eggs and there was piping hot coffee strong enough to wake a corpse. No one was quite sure how Flanders got eggs or any of the other things he cooked up, but everyone was careful not to cross him. The man made eggs taste like Christ himself spread them on a slice of toast and wielded a wicked cutting knife. Word was he'd knifed a man in St. Louis for back talking his barbeque, and there were quite a few who believed it. Toffer certainly did.

Toffer did not care. Toffer drank his coffee and he just breathed. For a good long time, it had felt like it had been months since he'd been able to breathe. Sometimes it felt like he'd spent the three years of his life between the Crash and Boulder Dam forty feet below water and no matter how much he kicked his feet to try and break the surface, there was always something that was ready to shove him back under. Got so he could hardly decide if he should take a piss with his right hand or his left.

Out of work. Living in a Hooverville in the Seattle rain.

He drank his coffee and washed those kind of thoughts away with the bitter brew. He picked up his hard-boiled hat. It wasn't much to look at. Soft cloth boiled in tar to harden. Man getting hit on the head with a rock while wearing one might take a hit, but he wouldn't break his head.

He clocked in for his shift. Foreman said, "Now, men, I'd like to introduce you to Inspector Jenkins." He pointed to a tall thin man with a pleasant enough expression. "Government's sent him down to make sure that we're doing everything safe and legal. So, I expect you'll give him full co-operation." Foreman smiled and there was a jagged drop from a very high space in that smile.

Toffer said, "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir," with the rest of the workers. The Six Companies Corporation had promised that there would be a $1.00 raise if the government threw in a dollar an hour for each worker. Could be this was the man to approve it. Could be nothing more would happen.

Toffer didn't care. He went out on the cliff face. He swung out on the ropes high above everything and felt free. He felt like nothing could ever shove him back under again.

He flew.

He was in the middle of flying when everything, and really that was everything, could have gone down the hole.

Inspector Jenkins was being taken over the rope line. Man was gripping on for dear life, but he wasn't born for this. He slipped and started to tumble down the steep slope. Toffer let slack his line. He dived down and caught the man by the ankle and there was a hard jerk to be sure. He hit his head against the cliff wall, but that's what the hard boiled hat was for. Toffer held on and hauled the inspector up. They dangled there. They spun. It was sort of glorious. With all the world spinning around them.

The other high-scalers hauled them the rest of the way.

Got to the top, and Jenkins breathed heavy for a full century. He said, "Son, you saved my life. I'd buy you a beer, but…" he shrugged away Prohibition, "wouldn't hardly be enough anyway."

Toffer pushed back his hard boiled hat and his head was ringing. "Long as you remember that everyone here could use a raise in your report, I'd call us even."

Jenkins looked like a kicked at hound. "Geologic reports don't have much to say about funding, but if you'll direct me to the nearest chop house, I'll see what I can do about feeding the lot of you." He widened his look to the high scalers close clustered around with their rock dust coated faces. "That's all of you."

The men cheered.

It was the best night of Toffer's life.

&&&


	7. Into the Great Divide

&&&

The ship consumes the lake. The hose sucks up gallons of water. 

It fills large bladders on the interior. 

It fills them up and only the drops know one drip from another.

&&&


	8. Fly a Starship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did change this slightly to be the navigator rather than starship captain. I hope that works for you. But it seemed to fit the other lives a bit more smoothly.

&&&

Kir was not the Captain. Ion storm zie in a nebula six ways till shift change, no. Zie wouldn't want to be the Captain. Someone just promoted into the job. Translated from a mud ball to sit in the command chair. Walking around and leaving the ship time to time. No kind of commitment. Captain thought the Reya Isabella was his ship because he gave the commands. But Kir was the one with zir hands on the starship's nav gems. Zie was the one with the umbili connect from the back of zir brain to the Reya Isabella. Kir caught solar wind in the Reya's sails.

Zie was decanted for this.

Captain was all commanding, "Kir, six degrees ruby and hard to port sapphire."

Kir was all "Yes, sir. No, sir." But ze's the one naving them cross the universe divide. That was all zirs sweet touch on the controls and with zir mind, yes it was.

Just like Jennings down in the engine coaxing the engines for one more shift change. Their minds slid past each other time betimes.

Jenning'd send a lacy white thought, "Careful up there with my ship."

It was valid, but Kir sent back a deep red velvet pulse, "Ah, Jennings, our girl loves it when we ride her this hard. Let her show us what she can do."

When the radiation blow off from that black hole played flip the x-ray skirt with its orbiting white star tried to snap the mainsails, ze'd just caught the rads sweet as you please. Down in the engine room, Jennings spun zir webs and had zirs back. That moment right then was what they were decanted for.

Zie caught that breeze, muttered take that you bastards, and sling shot them right cross to the other side. Zie reached out for Jennings and deep in the ship where the Captain couldn't even imagine, they sparked satisfied thoughts one to the other.

When the Reya Isabella's reached the other side, and it was all the Captain giving a speech via hollow wave and raising a glass of synth-grog. The umbili in the back of Kir's head dried and crackled to dust. Zie gasped at the sudden loss of it all. Zie couldn't feel the Reya Isabella. The gems were dark.

It was shift change. They'd decant a new crew for the ride home.

Kir stagged out of zir seat. Zie'd never stood before, but gormless legs or not zei'd take zir grog unsythed with Jennings in the Engine room, if you please.

Jennings was just as lost. Zie'd got her umbilli dust in zir lap when Kir showed up in the long low room that'd been thrumming webbing for a shift. Jennings had tears in all zir eyes, but Kir was not gunna have none of that. Not now that they were finally meeting face to face. "Now, I know you've been all shift distilling."

Jennings sighed a cloud dust of connection. It filled the air between them. "Yes." Jennings filled their glasses with something sparkling and white. They leaned against each other. Arms round each other. They drank to dissolution.

&&&


	9. Solar Winds Blow

&&&

The solar wind blows and meets with a comet that flairs its tail in answer. Ice spins off into the nothing. Spins into the atmosphere of something distant and there is a rain that looks like fire, but isn't.

&&&


	10. The Highwayman (reprise)

&&&

Violet Maulls shifted in hir dragonfly. Ze was getting full plus restless.

Gentle Kirin took a 360 spin view of space in hir dragonfly.

With the reclamation authorities keeping a tight watch, it wasn't as if they'd have more than one shot at this. Either do it or peace out.

Violet Maulls was about to bust when the Highwayman comet appeared out of the cloud of planetary remains. Kiri caught hir breath. Out of all that dusty murk, light was blazing away.

Violet Maulls engaged hir dragonfly. They followed at two clicks back. On Violet Maulls signal, they both fired grapples. Both grapples struck true, but they hadn't fully accounted for a whole hell of a lot of a stuff. That bastard spun and danced. The Highwayman kept on through space grabbing up lesser ice shards in hirs wake. Ze wasn't like any other comet they'd ever attempted.

Violet Maulls let go, but Gentle Kirin looked back to see the reclamation authorities close behind. It was thirty clicks of reducation time if they did their own grapple on them, and it wouldn't be hir coming out of that.

The Highwayman swung back into the cloud. Trailing behind, Gentle Kirin held on until they both disappeared.

&&&


	11. Icy Waters

&&&

Indigo ice rotates in the sea in a grand fashion. A drop of rain, one of so many, falls on a blue green crack. The drop drips down and the ice groans. Cracks and calves off into the blue sea.

They all fall. The drops and the ice. Into the waves that lap on and on.

&&&  
&&&  
&&&...


	12. [Podfic] Falls the Rain again

[Listen to this episode](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/play/vd5zu2/FalltheRainAgain.mp3)

[Download this episode (right click and save)](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/web/vd5zu2/FalltheRainAgain.mp3)

Music Credit - The song upon which the story is based.

Length: 12.4 Mb, 32:08

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
